


Where's Your Head At?

by aeriiin



Series: Collab Fics [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Collaboration, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mission Gone Wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:55:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22594405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeriiin/pseuds/aeriiin
Summary: Of course, It just had to be Rialto, where everything started going wrong in the first place with Overwatch.It just had to be this morning, when he hadn’t slept a wink all last night.Just had to be Hanzo, the reason he hadn’t slept in the first place.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Series: Collab Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1854169
Comments: 6
Kudos: 269





	Where's Your Head At?

  
Even before the Orca left the ground, McCree knew today would be horrible.

Told Fareeha as much on the tarmac, said to her, “Today’s gonna be awful.'' His head was killing him from the lack of sleep. Eyes burned in their sockets. Felt like even when he closed his eyes, that they weren’t closed  _ enough.  _ Knew he needed sleep, but it just wouldn’t come to him no matter how hard he tried. 

McCree had been banking on the hum of the Orca’s engine lulling him to sleep on the way to this sudden mission, but as it were, he wasn’t that lucky today. Just a quick puddle jump to Rialto, as if the day’s open wound wasn’t already bleeding enough.

He’d been so exhausted, he hadn’t even noticed Hanzo sit down beside him until he felt a hand nudge his shoulder. He barely cracked an eye open to the side to see a somewhat familiar sight: Hanzo, nursing a hangover with the expression of someone who was all too used them and managing as best he could. “No time to sleep. The briefing is going to start soon.”

“S’just restin’ my eyes.” McCree tried not to grumble too bitterly - failed at that, judging by how fast the archer jerked his hand back. Felt immediately guilty and sighed. “Apologies, ain’t exactly in the best mood right now.”

“I think I can relate.” Hanzo nodded sullenly, settling back into his seat with a slight wince. His fingers brushed along the slight reddened mark at the base of his hairline and he hissed at the contact. This close, McCree found it was harder to push down all them warm, protective feelings, hard to not reach out and brush aside some hair from Hanzo’s face and… and...

And _ hell _ , he was better off just leaving those thoughts where they were. 

Instead, McCree warned him like nothing was different, “Take it easy with that goose-egg o’ yours, archer. Only gonna make it worse the more you go ‘round messin’ with it.”

“I’m aware,” came the annoyed reply. “How I managed to get  _ this  _ while drinking, I’ll never know.”

“Yeah, I ain’t buyin’ that for a second.” McCree laughed on reflex, even though it wasn’t funny in the slightest, really. Ain’t no way the archer was gonna pull a fast one on him like that. Sure, drunk was drunk, but last night was... last night.

But then he saw how Hanzo only rolled his eyes and shot him a grin that was too playful, far too at ease “McCree, the whole point of drinking is to  _ forget _ , isn’t it?”

“... Wait, you’re serious?” McCree frowned, finally turning to face Hanzo. “You don’t remember?”

“No… I’m afraid not.” Hanzo said cautiously. He looked up in thought for a moment and hummed as he crossed his arms. “I remember coming to… vent about Genji, but little else past that.” The man sighed, shook his head, and paused before raising a questioning brow towards McCree. “Why do you ask?”

McCree felt a strange ache start to settle in his head, in his chest, in his throat. It was an utterly alien, utterly strange feeling, to have a memory of another person that they themselves cannot remember. Found he didn’t like it one bit. Felt like he was holding onto a secret someone told him to forget. Felt ugly. Felt wrong.

“McCree?” Hanzo started, concerned. “What--”

A loud pinging sound echoed in the Orca, and Commander Winston’s image flickered at the holo-dec.  _ “H-hello? Come in, Rialto Strike Team!” _

A distraction. McCree got up with only a short, “Chief’s callin’. Better see what he wants,” as the rest of the team shuffled around the table at the front of the airship. 

From the cockpit, Lena’s chipper voice rang out. “We hear you loud and clear, love! Floor’s yours.”

_ “Thank you, Tracer.”  _ Clearing his throat, the gorilla nodded to the crew.  _ “I’m sure you all are aware by now of the current riots in downtown Rialto that erupted around 7:45 AM after a pro-omnic protest went south. As there is little time before you arrive into Venice airspace, I will be brief: the object of today’s mission to find a way to minimize the damage caused by these riots and see if Overwatch can prevent any further incidents from breaking out.” _

Winston’s image on screen shifted to a helicopter view of the central plaza. Cars were abandoned in the busy streets as people ran in every which direction. As the video-feed played out the chaos of the city, the camera zoomed in on a series of omnics donned in crimson red and polished white armor. Winston continued with a sour expression,  _ “We have good reason to suspect Talon’s involvement in these riots, and I caution you all to remain vigilant as you head down there to contain the situation. For all we know, Talon could be poised and ready to strike the moment the ship lands.” _

Zarya’s grip on the holo-dec tightened hard enough to elicit a small bending sound. “Then we will not let any suspicious persons escape from the scene.” 

Beside him, McCree saw Mei flinch, while Angela shot a look of warning at Zarya. “We are not here to play cops and robbers, Agent Zarya. We are on damage-control. Fighting is to be kept to an absolute minimum unless provoked. ”

“And yet Overwatch has armed us with weapons for this mission.” Zarya fired back. Angela frowned further and looked to McCree as if asking for support. Didn’t have the energy in him to even offer the poor doc a shrug. __

Across the table, Hanzo was surprisingly alert, though the tiredness of his voice betrayed his valiant attempt at appearing vigilant. “Are there any more concerns we should be wary of, Commander?”

_ “Hm? Oh, uh, yes.” _ Winston nodded, and the screen switched to another camera, this time showing a video-feed of the main bridge from different angles. McCree watched as a strange plume of smoke seemed to crawl along the shadows underneath the bridge itself and manifest into a vaguely humanoid shape on the other side. Though the shadows made exact shapes hard to pinpoint, the figure turned to the side just enough to get a glimpse of their white mask and the gunslinger felt a newfound coldness seize his chest.

The scientist nudged his glasses nervously.  _ “While I can’t confirm for sure if he’s there or not currently, the Talon operative Reaper was undeniably spotted in Rialto just this morning.”  _

McCree felt Hanzo’s eyes on him, worried and tense all at once, and that coldness spread even further, forcing his bones to lock up and his throat to dry out. He didn’t meet the other’s gaze.

From there, it became harder and harder to pay attention. He’d got the important parts out of it anyway, McCree justified. The sinking feeling in his gut, the chill in his limbs, the exhaustion. Knew today was gonna suck, but boy had he underestimated just how bad it would be.

Of course, It just _ had _ to be Rialto, where everything started going wrong in the first place with Overwatch. 

It just  _ had  _ to be Reaper, a physical representation of his past coming back to haunt him.

It just _had_ to be this morning, when he hadn’t slept a wink all last night.

The holo-dec powered down with a final  _ “Good luck, agents!” _ from the commander, and McCree watched Hanzo make his way towards the seats. A sigh escaped his lips.

Just  _ had  _ to be Hanzo, the reason he hadn’t slept in the first place. 

Lena calling out to the cabin shook McCree out of his self-imposed stupor, “Ten minutes to landing! Buckle down or get tossed!”

* * *

  
  


McCree hated it when the Commander was right. Sure enough, within ten minutes of landing and the mission getting underway, Hanzo spotted from the rooftops several bands of Talon soldiers verging on the plaza, heavily armed and ready to fight. Zarya did what she could to shield and protect civilians, and McCree and Mei did their best to redirect the flow of the crowd to safety, but even still the Doc had her hands full in dealing with the injured. 

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, it was a familiar enough story for those who’ve served in Overwatch before.

A single shot crackled through the alleyway. The Talon omnic operative at the far end dropped to the ground; McCree didn’t stop to see where exactly he hit. Instead, he whipped his head towards Mei. “Clear.”

She nodded back firmly then turned to hold out a hand to the injured civilian beside her. They stood with her help hesitantly and Mei gestured to the entrance of the alleyway. “If you can walk, follow the others to the plaza. Quickly now!”

McCree watched the civilian flee, clutching their injured arm all the while as they joined up with the small group across the street, all in various degrees of battered. Only when he saw the group finally march off in the direction of the Orca did he let out his breath and holster his gun. 

Mei was still uneasy however. “Do you think they’ll be okay?”   
  


_ Dunno,  _ he thought. “Probably.” he said.

She shuffled in place, worrying her bottom lip. “McCree, do you think  _ we’ll  _ be okay?”

“The two of us? Well, sure. Worst of the panic’s probably died down by now.” McCree tipped his hat up to look at her better. “Why, you worried ‘bout somethin’?”

“Sort of.” Mei looked aside to the powered-down omnic, and tugged at the bottom of one of her sleeves. “It’s just that, ever since we landed, there’s been this… weird feeling in the air? Like smog, but not quite.” She frowned sharply. “It almost feels like back at Ecopoint. When I woke up alone.”

_ Like death. _

Those unspoken words were not lost on him. With a small sigh, he tossed the remains of his cigar to the ground and stammed it out under his heel. “C’mon. We’d better get back to the ship soon. Don’t wanna keep the others waitin’.”

“Oh… yes.” Mei stammered, but ultimately gave in with a curt nod and readjusted her back canister. “Shall we?”

As they stepped back out into the main thoroughfare, however, McCree watched as Mei suddenly pressed a hand up to her headset comm. 

“Hanzo? Yes, I can hear you. Oh?... Yes, he’s with me now!” she paused and frowned, turning to McCree. “Ah… Okay, I’ll let him know.”

She lifted her hand from her ear and pointed to his headset, then tapped her own.

Oh. Right. His comm. 

The gunslinger tried to not outwardly wince. Muting comms wasn’t really allowed on missions, but his headspace wasn’t ready to have Hanzo’s voice bouncing around in his head, so instead he had opted for just turning the volume down so low it barely registered as noise. 

McCree fiddled with the comm frequency for a bit before sighing and shaking his head at Mei. “Just static. Think mine’s busted.”

“Oh no,” Mei gasped and placed a finger back on her comm. “He says his comm isn’t working. Mhm-hm. Got it!” A pause and then she nodded a few times before responding back cheerfully. “Okay then! We’ll see you in a bit!”

Her hand dropped from her comm and for the first time since this morning, Mei smiled somewhat. “Hanzo said that Talon appears to be retreating by boat, and that it was too dangerous to follow them to the docks. He’s going to meet up with us here in just a bit, and we’ll head back to the plaza together for now.”

“Well alright then.” He nodded at her. “You stay here; I wanna give this whole place a quick once-over, just so we ain’t sittin’ ducks.” 

“Oh, o-okay!” Mei stiffened. “But don’t wander too far! Hanzo will be here soon!”

He smiled half-way. “You got it, snow angel.” 

McCree had a funny feeling they both knew the search was ultimately a fruitless endeavor, truly - it was less of a ‘survey of the area’ and more of a ‘pacing with purpose’, in all honesty. But nevertheless it did its job in keeping him distracted well enough. 

With each loop he made of the small-ish city block they found themselves in, McCree found his eyes falling back onto that one alleyway over and over. The clouds rolling in with the afternoon made the shadows in the alley seem all the more sinister, darker, deeper. From this angle, he couldn’t see the omnic they left at the far back end, or even that the alley had an end at all, and it all made something in his gut not sit right. Though, hell, the whole _ city  _ made him feel that way, if he really stopped to think about it.

He knew he couldn’t go around avoiding Hanzo forever, even if the archer  _ didn’t _ remember anything. It wasn’t fair to Hanzo to get angry about something the man couldn’t recall. And yet those thoughts just kept swirling around in his head, spinning, spiraling, curling themselves into every nook and cranny. 

Sure, Hanzo didn’t remember, but McCree couldn’t forget. Didn’t want to either.

As he rounded the corner towards the alleyway, McCree noticed yet another injured civilian, this one bracing herself against a wall as she favored her one leg. 

“Wow, easy there, ma’am,” he trotted up beside her, offering a steadying hand out to her. “Need some help? Can ya walk?”

She turned to him cautiously, but McCree could tell she was in pain as she cast a wary eye down to her leg and grit her teeth. 

“Figures. Alright, gimme a sec.” With a resignating sigh, he sent Mei a quick IM over their comms with his coordinates and before long, the scientist was jogging up to meet them. With Hanzo en route, more than likely.

Thankfully, Mei didn’t waste any time. “We’re here from Overwatch. I can escort you to the plaza -- Dr. Ziegler will be able to help you.” The civilian nodded to the lot of them as she mumbled words of thanks and gratitude in between hisses of pain. 

He stood and watched as the two of them trudged down the street, slowly but surely, yet once again, McCree knew his mind was elsewhere. Distant. Distracted. Knew he wasn’t paying attention as he should have been, even before he felt that dreaded chill creeping up the base of his neck. 

The smell of ash and rot flooded his nostrils. A voice like the grave resonated. 

“Where’s your head at, kid?”

A clawed hand wrapped around his head and slammed him into the nearby wall. 

Searing white hot pain. A ringing noise in his ears. He cried out and felt himself drop like a ragdoll. 

“McCree?” Mei screamed. “McCree!”

McCree blinked, closed his eyes. Didn’t know how long, everything happened in snapshots. Opened his eyes and saw a wall of ice. Heard a muffled impact. The ground was cold.

He blinked and then darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to another fic/comic collab with [Jordan](http://ludwigplayingthetrombone.tumblr.com/) !! 
> 
> Chapter 2 will be posted to Jordan's tumblr tomorrow! Keep an eye out for it!
> 
> Thank you for reading! As always, you can find me over at my [tumblr](http://aerihead.tumblr.com/) and my [twitter](https://twitter.com/aerihead/)!


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